


lavender's ashes

by herwhiteknight



Series: inktober 19 [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Fairy Tale Curses, Light Angst, With A Twist, fairytale au. ish.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 05:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21423217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herwhiteknight/pseuds/herwhiteknight
Summary: There was a powerful evil sorcerer who cursed his apprentice into a being of rage incarnate. The beast reigned destruction upon the world, for she knew no love or kindness. Until a human with a curse of her own came to save her.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Series: inktober 19 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1517693
Comments: 7
Kudos: 77





	lavender's ashes

**Author's Note:**

> inktober prompt: dragon
> 
> yep, we're still doing this! at least we're doing this until i finish the 2 or 3 wips that i started back when i had Inspiration and then... from there idk what we'll do. but until then, here's... this?

She remembered burning. Turning over houses like pebbles in the sand. Tossing cars and cargo ships like skipped flat rocks.

She remembered it being fun. Exhilarating.

But she also remembered pain.

Oh, there were things she had to go through to get her revenge like this. There were words she had to hear and messages she had to carve into skin - her own skin. Skin that was soft before it changed. Morphed. Scales.

She remembered fire. Writhing and thrashing as flames took hold, licked up her skin and engulfing her flesh in patterns that would become her armor.

Armor that no one had gotten past.

She remembered watching them drink. Watching them throw their lives in revelry, in abandonment. Laughing and pissing indecently against building walls, to go back in and laugh some more. Gods she fucking hated the way they threw their lives away. To waste such a precious gift. A vessel of purity. Unmarred by curse, untouched by evil.

But, that was her first time she allowed the rage to swell. The first time she bellowed fire. If they were going to waste their gift, their miracle, she would teach them what they were losing. They wanted to throw away their sanity for a night of cheap thrills and fucking stupidity, to drown their cares and their rationalities with such carelessness? 

She would teach them. And she did.

Burning felt… wonderful.  _ Wonderful _ . More so. More than.  _ This  _ was her gift. Bring judgement and deal a fair hand to those who would squander their intellect, their bodies. It was only fair after all, on her part. A man who looked like them, those of whom stumbled on the streets and kicked stray dogs and spat upon beggers… it was a man such as that who had made her like this.

All for a question. 

"What if you used your power for something  _ greater _ ?"

He'd shown her greater. How he bellowed and frothed and snorted and kicked. He exhausted himself, melted skin and bone of his own but oh,  _ oh,  _ how he punished her. She'd writhed and screamed and wished for death.

It was not granted. 

"Something greater?" he'd snarled, collapsed and sickly, but anger fuelling his final moments. "You'll be my crowning achievement. Cursed to anger, cursed to rage, cursed to  _ hate _ . My life's work.. that's something greater. You'll burn the world down for me, Blake. And no one will ever be able to stop you."

She remembered the way his breath rattled out of his ribcage, and a flame with it. It drew towards Blake's own lips, spread, chewed, devoured through her skin. Blistered into scales, shiny and new and devastating. Cursed.

She remembered a great bellow in voice that wasn't her own shattering through her ribcage. And she remembers nothing else but hunger and flames. And  _ hatred _ .

So the world burned. It raged in its own way, smoke piling high into the sky and clawing to pull remaining colours, blue and gold and lavender, tried to snatch them down and bury them in blackness and soot.

The lavender stayed. And later, though Blake would not remember this, the lavender would save.

A final sunset started to fall. Jet black triumph snorted from Blake's nostrils, and her red slitted eyes blinked lazily at the scarred earth surrounding her. Hate. Anger. Flames. Hunger. Cursed. Earth received its judgement, and there was nothing else to be done. Trees crumbled at the flick of her tail, and her scales had grown black from devastation.

The flames began to die, the soot began to settle. But the anger, the hate… the hunger. So they remained. 

There was beauty in the last uncovered sunset. It would soon be covered by ash and soot, stirred up by Blake's own claws. But the colours drew her. Against the stark backdrop of an unnatural midnight, something called to her.

"What if this power was used for something greater?"

And out of the sunset, a final flash of lavender was engulfed in a halo of gold. A figure stepped out, bold and unafraid. A human.

"All this… for what?" The woman gestured, approaching and unarmed. "What did you gain from this?" Her long flowing hair snapped fire and sparks upon the wind, and her sunset gaze steadied itself pure into Blake's anger. 

And in that clarity, the piercing gaze that held no lies, Blake realized her curse. Felt surrounded by anger and hate but knew herself to  _ exist _ . To be pierced by horror at the destruction her body had wrought. "I gained  _ nothing _ ," a high-pitched keen cut from her throat. 

Inexplicably, the woman smiled. "I'd heard stories about the dragon who would end the world. So many of them said you had no remorse, that no gift or pleasure would sate you. No weapon would slay you. So, I brought nothing."

Red swirled from within, tore up her heart, blasted fire from her nostrils inches from this woman. "Then you are a  _ fool _ !" rumbled from her chest, derision darkening her words. And hatred rattled inside her lungs. But this time, she felt it change. Directed at herself - but not herself at the same time.

"Maybe a fool is what it takes to get this close. Maybe I need to be even more a fool to get closer still," she raised her hands in surrender and took a step closer to Blake's coiling frame. 

Blake watched, smoke curling from burning nostrils, and begged her to run away. Begged her to get closer.  _ Let me devour you, let me end you. Let me free you _ . "You walk to your  _ death _ , human!" she growled, teeth parting, throat glowing. 

"Not quite," the woman said, reaching out her right hand as if to touch Blake's snout.

Flames jumped out from the pit of Blake's belly unbidden -  _ the insolence of this woman must be destroyed!  _ \- and her maw parted wide, forge-sparked heat incinerating the woman before her. And for the first time, Blake felt  _ sorrow _ . 

But it didn't last. Through the smoke and ashes, a glint of lavender pierced through, separate from the bellowed flames. And not just separate, but  _ separating  _ them, as a stone in a river.

And Blake caught sight of scales within her fire, and pulled back in shock, jaw snapping shut with a violent sound. 

The human still stood before her.

"I know that feeling," the woman said, shaking off clothing of ash. "That rage within the fire. That curse," she lifted her right arm, revealing shimmering purple scales that clawed their way up her entire arm, right to her shoulder and embedding in her chest like a cancer. "He cursed me, once. Made me nearly drown in self-loathing. I wouldn't have made it through the night. Not without the people who loved me."

Blake stared at her arm, transfixed.  _ The one who got away. She lives? _

** _Destroy her._ **

“I  _ won't _ !” Blake snarled in a deafening, sky-splitting terrible sound. She dropped to the ground with a thundering crash, raking at the ashes with claws that had so much blood on them. 

“You can fight it,” the woman’s gentle voice broke through the cacophony that clamoured in her mind. “I know you can. Because you have someone who believes in you now, okay? My name’s Yang and I believe in you.” 

Yang’s hand, soft and warm and  _ human,  _ touched her nose, sure and strong between twin spirals of smoke. Her lavender eyes looked on gently, understanding meeting the uncertainty that swam within Blake’s. “He hurt us both,” Yang said, lifting her dragon scales once more. “But  _ you  _ were the one who defeated him. He doesn’t have power over you anymore.”

** _No. NO! You will destroy her! _ **

_ You will! You- _

“I won't,” Blake lifted her head from the group, levelling her gaze with lavender and realizing all at once in one singular moment that the anger and the hatred and the  _ rage  _ she’d felt all this time, that she took so much pleasure in… none of that was her. She was  _ good  _ before. She loved so dearly, was so bravely kind. “I won't listen to you anymore. I’m not your weapon, I won't burn for you, I won't kill for you, I…  _ won’t! _ !” 

Blake stretched her neck to the sky with a great roar, and flames of molten red spat out of her maw, melting her teeth. Her underbelly glowed crimson, searing the soft flesh and charring the bones. And Yang stood before it all, hands braced against a shoulder that was disintegrating.

“Fight him!” Yang screamed amidst the constant pressure wave of sound emitting from the flames as her own screams of pain mingled with Blake’s. She looked down at her arm and watched the scales drop from her flesh, leaving angry welts in their place.

But she held on, staring up at the dragon’s head that had nearly lost all of its structure. Save for it’s eyes. Eyes that sparked legends, tales of the fearsome red that glowed in the night, right before terrible destruction was wrought.

Yang only saw amber.

Blake’s fire and defiance was finally spent, her great head buried itself back in the ground, now just a skeleton of wax and char. Her eye blinked open slowly one last time, tracking slowly into Yang’s, who still stood, motionless and in awe, next to the broken bones of the once mighty dragon. The common folk who would later tell the tales of this day would say that Yang had slain the beast, but all Yang could feel was a weary sadness. 

“Thank you,” a low murmur puffed out from somewhere past it’s teeth. “I hope to repay you… someday. For this kindness.”

“What is your name?” Yang asked desperately, as Blake’s eyes started to cloud over. “So I can find you again, the day our paths cross next?”

There was a long moment of stillness as Blake regarded Yang. Her lavender eyes, the burned skin of her right arm. “It was Blake, once…,” she sighed. “But I won't remember you, if this life ever allows for us to meet again. I don’t even remember myself…”

“I’ll find you,” Yang promised earnestly. “I’ll find you, and I’ll remember you. No matter what it takes, no matter where you end up or the form you take. And we’ll heal. Together.”

Blake felt her soul slipping, but she rested her gaze one final time into Yang’s lavender eyes and strengthened her resolve. “Wait for me, Yang,” she breathed at last, and closed her eyes as the wind picked up, and carried her ashes into some other life.


End file.
